Following up on an earlier item, it seems pretty clear that Barack Obama’s speech on race in America has helped the senator rebound a bit. The latest CBS News poll highlighted the trend, as does the latest Gallup tracking poll. Barack Obama has quickly made up the deficit he faced with Hillary Clinton earlier this […]
On the environment, McCain offers more of the same — for the most part
Usually, when highlighting the ways in which John McCain offers the nation four more years of George W. Bush, the list includes a familiar litany of issues — war policy, foreign policy, irresponsible tax cuts for the very wealthy, healthcare, education. Dealing with the environment, however, generally doesn’t make the list. To his credit, McCain, […]
The quintessential unforced error
Following up on an item from a week or so ago, Hillary Clinton has actively touted a 1996 trip to Bosnia as evidence of her foreign policy background. Sinbad, a comedian who traveled with the then-First Lady for this trip, raised questions about the accuracy of Clinton’s version of events, but the candidate and the […]
Hannity makes a funny
Several State Department contractors improperly, and possibly illegally, peeked at Barack Obama’s passport file (in addition to Hilary Clinton’s and John McCain’s). Administration officials have apologized, publicly and privately, and have already begun an investigation. Sean Hannity, however, believes it’s wrong for Obama to blame the administration that failed to protect his private records, and […]
McCain’s Gerald Ford Moment
I’ve seen some reporters give John McCain some pretty foolish passes before, but this is just irritating. During the March 20 edition of MSNBC’s Hardball, while discussing Sen. John McCain’s admittedly false claim on March 18 that “[i]t’s common knowledge and has been reported in the media that Al Qaeda is going back into Iran […]
Bill Clinton and the candidates ‘who love this country’
As much as I like and admire Bill Clinton, I’ll be the first to admit that on a couple of occasions during this campaign, he’s said some things he shouldn’t have. The reaction to this, however, seems excessive and off-base. Former President has made yet another comment ripe for interpretation as a swipe at Senator […]
The wrong argument: if Bill helped you, you owe Hillary
When it comes to the Clinton campaign’s response to Bill Richardson’s support for Barack Obama, it was a little striking to hear Mark Penn dismiss the governor with such a cavalier attitude: “The time that he could have been effective has long since passed,” Penn said, “I don’t think it is a significant endorsement in […]
Did Obama’s speech turn the tide?
Once news outlets put snippets from Jeremiah Wright’s sermons in heavy rotation, Barack Obama had a political problem, and he saw his poll numbers slip fairly quickly. His speech in Philadelphia this week intended to allow the senator to explain his perspective in depth and detail, and ideally, explain to the country why this is […]
This Week in God
First up from the God machine this week is some follow up to a religion story we’ve been following closely for several weeks: the IRS’s decision to investigate the entire United Church of Christ denomination — Barack Obama’s denomination — in a presidential election year. As we’ve discussed, the IRS probe seems almost inexplicable. The […]
Let’s define ‘disenfranchise’
In light of the ongoing controversy surrounding Florida and Michigan, their non-binding primaries, and their convention delegates, the word “disenfranchise” has been thrown around quite a bit. Probably, a little too much. As it happens, both the Clinton and Obama campaigns have a reasonable case to make. For Team Clinton, millions of Democratic voters turned […]